WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1859
205
with a gallant people-none have ever been tested to the same extent--without resources, new, unhoused, surrounded by all the inconveniences and all the perils of a wilderness, surrounded by savage tribes, and with the feelings of nations alien to us. Sir, we have had these perils to pass through; and loyal to one section of the country, I was loyal to all. When Texas was annexed to the United States, it was ncrt to a southern confed- eracy, nor in anticipation of one; she was annexed to the Union; and as a Union man, I have ever maintained my position, and I ever shall. I wish no prouder epitaph to mark the board or slab that may lie on my tomb than this: "He loved his country, he was a patriot; he was devoted to the Union." If it is for this that I have suffered martyrdom, it is sufficient that I stand at quits with those who have wielded the sacrificial knife. But, sir, it has not estranged me from the people I represent. The gentleman says that I have no right to represent them on this floor; that I have been repudiated. That forms a justification for him, I suppose, when speaking of the entire South, to embrace the little section of Texas and represent that, too, while he ex- cludes the actual representative from any participation in the duties of his station. I admit the great ability of the gentleman, and his entire competence for the task. He speaks of the whole South as familiarly as if he were speaking for it; and in contra- dictinction to the whole South, he speaks of Georgia as "my own State." Well, sir, that may be all right; Georgia may have but one man in it for aught I know. [Laughter.] I have not been there for two years; but it did seem to me, having heard of distinguished personages there, some that· have occasionally illumined the Senate by the corruscations of their genius and their profound ability, that really Georgia had some other repre- sentatives on this floor and in the other House than the honorable Senator himself. Can the gentleman suppose that any little mar, as he would think it to be, in not reelevating me to a situation in this body, would inflict the slightest mortification on me? Not at all. I do not believe that it was intended in the act to compliment me, by any means. I believe it was designed to pretermit and rebuke me; and the means to do it were afforded, because the persons who were then in power and who controlled the presses and political influences in the State had been pampered, and nourished, and cherished by the means which my late colleague, General Rusk, and myself, procured for the State, the $5,000,000 granted
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